A Sunny McCoskey Napa Valley Mystery 2: Death by the Glass Page 16

  “Sunny!” cried Rivka.

  “Kidding,” said Monty.

  “Can we stay focused, people?” said Sunny. “I am trying to get to the bottom of all the weirdness at Vinifera and I’m telling you Dahlia was really defensive, in an assertive kind of way.”

  “Honestly, what did you expect?” said Rivka. “You drive out to her house unannounced and ask a ton of questions. It had to be obvious that you were there to snoop around.”

  “That implies a guilty conscience. If there was nothing to hide, it wouldn’t occur to her that I was snooping. She obviously didn’t want me to see what she’d been writing.”

  “No, I happen to know she didn’t.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The notes on the desk were part of a project we were working on together.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I was out there just this afternoon before yoga.”

  “What project?”

  “And it has nothing to do with Nathan Osborne, at least in the way you imagine.”

  An uneasy silence gripped the table. Rivka sighed. “Fine. I’ll tell you. It was a love potion. I know it sounds stupid. We were working on a sort of cleansing ceremony and a potion. You put it in a tiny vial and wear it around your neck in one of those little leather pouches. It was partly for you, partly for her. She was trying to cleanse her heart, and in doing so set Andre free of any connections he might have to her, and vice versa. And to set Nathan free so he could proceed through the afterlife in peace. Part of the process is to write down everything about the person that still connects you to them, good and bad. Obviously, she didn’t want you to see a bunch of writing about Andre.”

  “Was that her idea or yours?”

  “She was talking about cleansing her heart of past loves, in relation to Nathan, mostly, but also Andre. She suggested we do something to encourage things between the two of you. She really does wish you well.”

  “Like some kind of spell?”

  “You could call it that.”

  “Monty?”

  “Pass. The whole witch’s brew–love tonic concept renders me speechless. You’re talking to a man who can’t believe literate adults still read the horoscope column. It’s more proof that people will believe absolutely anything.”

  “Just because you can’t explain a phenomenon doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist,” said Rivka. “So what did she have to say about Osborne?”

  “Well, the broken bottle didn’t bother her,” said Sunny. “She thought there could be an innocent explanation. Then she brought up this philosopher Occam.”

  “Occam’s razor,” Monty said.

  “Which is?” asked Rivka.

  “Basically, whatever looks like the most obvious solution is probably the right answer,” said Sunny. “It reminded me of what Catelina used to say, ‘If it looks like a duck, smells like a duck, and walks like a duck, don’t expect it to taste like a pig.’ Dahlia figured since it looked like a simple heart attack, it probably was. I think that solution leaves too many questions unanswered.”

  The dinner got the best of them and they ate in silence, each possessed by thoughts. After a while, Monty heaped more stroganoff onto his plate. “I think we need a new approach. We don’t know what happened, let alone how. We can only guess, and that’s not going to do us any good. What do we know about who and why?”

  “We’ll know a lot more about that tomorrow,” said Rivka. “Dahlia is going to hear the reading of the will.”

  “Do you think she’ll tell you what they say?” asked Sunny.

  “I don’t see why not.”

  “I still say Remy has the real motive, regardless of inheritance or lack thereof,” said Monty. “He is clearly the purveyor of false wines. There’s a connection between that wine and Nathan’s death. Nathan got in the way somehow and had to be eliminated.”

  “What bothers me is that case of wine in the cellar at Vinifera,” said Sunny. “If Remy did it, why wouldn’t he get the rest of that wine out of the cellar before somebody like me or the cops found it? That strongly suggests his innocence.”

  “Or carelessness, or brazenness,” said Monty. “Or intelligence. Maybe he figured the cops would think like you. If he didn’t get rid of the wine he must be innocent.”

  “The more information I get, the bigger the knot becomes. I’m not untying anything. But I still think there is more to those essential oils Dahlia makes. She said most of them are toxic. That gives her the means and the know-how to poison the guy who’s been jerking her around for who knows how long. She’s bound to have plenty of animosity for Nathan, and possibly a financial motive as well.”

  “She doesn’t have animosity toward Nathan,” said Rivka. “Or at least not a lethal dose of it. He was a bad boyfriend who dumped her. Several times. But she doesn’t hate him, and it certainly wouldn’t be enough to make her want to kill him. And if anything, she was financially motivated to keep him around.”

  “The Rastburns said she practically went postal on him,” said Sunny.

  “Who are the Rastburns again?” asked Monty.

  After Sunny explained, Monty ran a hand over his scalp, smoothing the nonexistent hair. “You know, Sun, I think you might have to face the fact that you may never know exactly what happened. It is entirely possible, in my opinion, that somebody put something in a drink or a plate of food that eventually made its way to Nathan Osborne’s doomed lips. But it could have been any number of people, including just about anybody on staff at Vinifera, or the Rastburns for that matter. We’ve got your studly chef boyfriend there in the kitchen. He needed Osborne out of the way in order to become a partner, and he knows which plate is his because Osborne always special orders. Means and motive. We’ve got Dahlia out there on the floor. She’s been burned by him more than once and she’s still bringing him his evening cocktail. That’s got to piss her off no matter what she says. Not to mention that she has a chemistry lab back at her Unabomber shack. Plenty of means, plenty of motive. Then we’ve got Remy, my personal favorite, the embittered sommelier with a criminal event to protect. He’s on the floor, behind the bar, bringing over special drinks. Plenty of means, plenty of motive. And we’ve got our bartender who takes Osborne home the night he dies. Talk about means. Still, we can probably eliminate him at least. Unless Osborne secretly willed him his fortune, I don’t see a motive.”

  Sunny bit her lip. “He could have a motive. Last night when I was hanging around outside Vinifera waiting for the Rastburns, I saw him kissing Dahlia. It looked like he meant it.”

  “For the love of a good woman?” said Monty. “It could be that as easily as anything else. Or it could be a busser or a barback or a line cook with a vendetta as far as we know. It could be anybody or nobody. Or two people working together—Dahlia and Andre, if you’ll both forgive me.”

  “I don’t think we’ll ever know the absolute truth,” said Rivka, “but if we have to guess, I’m going to agree with Dahlia. Looks like a heart attack, and was verified as a heart attack by the people who know about such things. I think I’ll call it a heart attack. So Remy forged a case of wine. I don’t think it’s worth ruining Vinifera’s reputation over, do you? And as for Dahlia’s essential oils, it’s a hobby, and a very interesting one in my opinion. She makes her own perfumes, her own candles, her own soap. She mixes her own colors. It’s not a crime to be creative. Sunny, you ought to understand that better than anyone. And besides, you yourself said there are tons of poisonous substances around. They’re everywhere. Even that tree in the backyard at Vinifera. Just because somebody has foxglove in their garden and ant spray under the sink doesn’t make them dangerous.”

  “It does if you’re an ant,” said Monty.

  “I forgot about that,” said Sunny.

  “What?” said Rivka.

  “The yew tree. Dahlia called it the Tree of Death that night when we all ate outside,” Sunny said.

  “I know what you’re thinking, but it can’t be that,” said R
ivka. “She wouldn’t have said that if she’d just killed him, or even if she knew he was dead. No one knew yet, even though he’d been dead a whole day.”

  “I’m not so sure,” said Sunny, shaking her head. “I have a hunch somebody at that table knew. I think somebody from Vinifera visited Osborne late that night, but they kept it and what they saw there to themselves. Bottles of 1967 Marceline don’t grow on trees. The most logical place to find one is the cellar at Vinifera, and it’s that much easier if you work there.”

  “The person who knew exactly where to look was Remy,” said Monty.

  “The Rastburns mentioned something else that’s strange. They said Remy is the only one with a key to the alcoves where the more valuable wines are usually kept.”

  “That can’t be true. In a place the size of Vinifera it’s totally impractical,” said Rivka. “Imagine if Bertrand was the only one with a key to the wine cage at Wildside.”

  “It’s worse than that,” said Sunny. “I’m the only one with a key, and I can never find it. But there is usually plenty of warning when somebody is going to crack open a magnum of Morgon over lunch. From what Andre said, the stuff in the alcoves at Vinifera is very high end or not ready to drink yet. And almost none of it is on the menu. Basically, Remy is the only one who sells those wines, so he’s the only one who needs access. Still, none of this proves anything. That bottle of wine has been kicking around since 1967. In theory, it could have come from anywhere. It could have nothing to do with the case I found at Vinifera. And so the Tree of Death presides over every family meal on the premises. It may be nothing more than an intriguingly macabre but irrelevant detail. My conclusion, lady and gentleman, is that we’re back where we started.”

  The rest of the meal was spent in the discussion of blander topics. After dinner, Monty served wedges of apple pie with vanilla ice cream while they lay on the Turkish carpet in front of the fireplace in the living room. Conversation was gradually replaced with drowsy silence. They tackled the cleanup with professional efficiency and then said a prompt and sleepy goodnight.

  17

  Had it been time to get up, the sky would have been tinged with the pale light of dawn. Instead, Sunny opened her eyes to heavy darkness. The house was perfectly silent except for the faint buzz of the old clock radio on the nightstand, a pre-digital relic yellow with age. She made several attempts to go back to sleep, turning over and wiggling deep under the covers, warm and comfortable but thoroughly awake. She tried to set her thoughts aside and sink into the oblivion of sleep without success. Voluntarily and involuntarily, her mind analyzed the previous day’s activities with methodical determination. She went over conversations with the Rastburns and Dahlia, replaying bits and pieces, obsessively hunting some new insight.

  The memory of a dream washed over her. It was tantalizingly close. She lay very still, reaching for each image. She was in a Gothic-looking workshop or laboratory, dense with dark vials and menacing, twisting contraptions. Dahlia stood over a cauldron, ripping out her knitting and letting each length of wool drop into the bubbling water. She tossed the ball of yarn and bamboo needles in last. Sunny said, “That won’t help. You’ll ruin it.” Dahlia stirred the pot and said, with almost cheerful nonchalance, “The needles give it soul. Anything will release its soul in the right conditions.” Sunny lay in bed chasing more of the dream, sensing there was more, but nothing else would come.

  Finally she got up and went into the dark living room, where her laptop was set up on a narrow table against the wall. She turned the machine on and headed to the kitchen to put water on for coffee. The clock read just after four. She tried to remember people’s reaction at staff dinner Sunday night when Dahlia mentioned the yew tree. There had been a shifting in seats and the exchange of glances around the table when she fished the needles out of the glass. They’d heard her Tree of Death speech before. Everyone knew the tree was poisonous.

  She left the water to boil and returned to the living room, where the blue glow emanating from the computer screen filled the dark room with a futuristic aura. She typed yew and poison into the search engine, which promptly pulled up thousands of entries. Yew’s toxicity, like hemlock, was apparently notorious. Dozens of web sites described how the yew tree had been worshiped by the Druids and the Celts, especially at winter solstice. There were accounts of assassinations, suicides, and murders going back thousands of years using infusions and extracts of yew. Ancient arrows had been tipped with poisonous extract of yew. Legend warned even of sleeping under a yew tree. Then she read how Roman soldiers had died after drinking wine that had been stored in casks made of yew wood.

  The water in the kettle had almost boiled away when she finally went back to the kitchen, and she settled for a strong cup of coffee instead of a whole pot. Palms moist with a mixture of dread and excitement, she went back to the computer. The more scientific of the sites described the effects and attributes of taxine, the poisonous compound in yew, and taxol, the miracle cancer drug recently discovered in the same branches. The description of poisoning by yew made the room sway, and she had to remind herself to keep breathing as she read. Wrote one researcher, “Yew exerts its toxic action upon the heart. The primary (and often the only) sign of poisoning is sudden death. All parts of the tree are poisonous, particularly the needles.” According to the same site, death could occur within a few minutes or a few hours later, depending on the dose. If the dose was high enough, the heart simply stopped.

  She typed up her thoughts and printed them out, then waited while the computer ran through its signing-off ritual. Her toes felt icy on the wood floor. She shivered, noticing for the first time her bare arms and legs.

  The sun was just beginning to light the eastern horizon as she pulled up in front of the St. Helena Police Station. To the west, the last of the stars persisted in a cobalt blue sky. A layer of frost silvered the sidewalk. Inside the station, a monastic hush pervaded the dimly lit receiving room. Sunny waited for the clerk to turn her attention to her. Behind the clerk, a dispatcher reported a dog without a collar on Spring Street. Sunny stated her business and learned that neither Sergeant Harvey nor Officer Dervich was currently on duty, but Sergeant Harvey would be arriving shortly. Sunny placed an envelope on the counter.

  “Could you give this to Sergeant Harvey when he arrives?”

  “I’ll see that he receives it,” said the woman, turning back to her computer.

  “It’s important.”

  “I understand.”

  “What time did you say he’ll be in?”

  “Some time this morning.”

  Outside, the birds had started to welcome the day. Sunny glanced at her watch. Bismark’s wouldn’t be open for another twenty minutes. It was tempting to wait. The cozy atmosphere of the café was addicting, and she could use the comfort of its scarred wooden tables, the morning paper, the aloof camaraderie of the espresso jockeys, and the predictably salty and chewy bagel with cream cheese and tomato. But there would be no relaxing until this business with Nathan Osborne was resolved, and she was going to see it resolved. She cast a last longing look up the street and got in the truck.

  The kitchen at Wildside was icy and dark when she arrived, but there was plenty to do and the ovens would heat the place up in no time. She thought with relief of having to prepare the chickpea purée that she’d added to the menu last week, served with rosemary olive oil and goat cheese crostini. It would be a fine way to kill time until she could talk with Steve.

  She’d only just changed into her work clothes when Steve Harvey rang the mobile line.

  “What’s this rant you left me, McCoskey?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think you’ve gone off your cracker. Let me be more specific. On page three of five, paragraph three, you reference the witches of Macbeth. Shakespeare, I believe. And I quote, ‘Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble.’ Sunny, have you lost your mind?”

  “That’s just historical background mat
erial, establishing how widely known the poisonous qualities of the yew tree are. That’s what the witches say as they toss sprigs of yew into the pot with the eye of newt. Yew is highly toxic.”

  “I see.”

  “Didn’t you read the important part? How a good dose of yew causes a sudden heart attack, often with no other signs or symptoms? It’s a powerful cardiac depressant. Steve, there’s a yew tree right in the backyard at Vinifera and plenty of people on staff knew about its poisonous properties. Dahlia even mentioned it the night I was there. You don’t have to eat very much of the stuff, and if you made some kind of extract, which is not very difficult, you’d need even less. You could figure out how to do it from a book or online, or you could pay somebody to do it for you. Since the poison takes effect within a few minutes and Osborne had just ingested a glass of wine when he died—the source of which is coincidentally very much in question—my guess is you’re going to find a great big dose of taxine in that glass. That’s the toxic element in yew. Taxine A and B. You guys keep that sort of thing, right?”

  “You mean the wine left in the glass.”

  “Yeah.”

  She heard the creak of him leaning back in his chair. A telltale thump indicated he’d put his feet up on the desk. “Well, as I stated before, in a case like this, we don’t necessarily treat the area as a crime scene, since no crime is known to have been committed. When it’s fairly clear that the victim has succumbed to natural causes with no signs of injury or foul play apparent, it wouldn’t be automatic protocol to collect extensive material evidence from the scene of death.”

  Steve sometimes had a way of sounding like a legal document spoken in triplicate with footnotes. She stepped up the volume on the mobile and held it out from her ear, hoping to minimize the radiation.

  “So you didn’t keep a sample,” she said.

  “In this particular situation, we did not have a verified medical history of heart disease. There were no witnesses, and we also had several elements present that might have suggested a more involved scenario.”